


Solicitude

by doomedship



Series: Moments In Time [2]
Category: Sanditon (TV 2019)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-02
Updated: 2019-11-02
Packaged: 2021-01-20 20:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21287723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doomedship/pseuds/doomedship
Summary: Five times Sidney needs Charlotte.
Relationships: Charlotte Heywood/Sidney Parker
Series: Moments In Time [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1534562
Comments: 13
Kudos: 191





	Solicitude

_one_.

.......

He's thrown from his horse one day, on the road just outside Sanditon.

They are not long married and he's on his way back from business in London, hurrying back to see her and going perhaps faster than he should, but his horse has other ideas and slips a shoe, sending them both tumbling on the hillside.

Cursing the pain that instantly wracks his body, he manages to walk the rest of the way back to town with the unfortunate horse limping in tow.

Charlotte comes running down the stairs second she sees a tall, dark figure in the distance, but her bright smile dims quickly when she realises Sidney is walking, and as he gets closer, sees his face contorted in pain.

"What happened?" she gasps, hiking her skirts so she can run to meet him. She puts his arm around her shoulders and takes some of his weight at once, and loops the horse's reins around her wrist.

"Horse lost a shoe," he grunts, grimacing as he tries to readjust his shoulder, which he's cradling awkwardly. "On the hill just outside town."

They get him to the house with a combined effort, and with the horse handed over to a groom, she helps him into the sitting room where mercifully she's already got a robust fire going, and he gives a sigh of relief as he flops gracelessly into the nearest chair and stretches his legs out in front of him.

She sends for the doctor as soon as she can, and then goes to sit by him as she smooths her hand through his hair.

"This is not quite what I meant when I said hurry back to me," she says with a wry smile, and he gives her a lofty glare. She kisses his cheek and leans over him so she can untie his cravat and loosen his shirt for him.

"You are giving me a very welcome display," he comments idly, and she glances up at him and then follows his gaze down at herself, rapidly identifying the direction of his thoughts to lie somewhere within her cleavage.

"We have been married a month, and yet you are still fascinated by the merest glimpse of them?" she says dryly.

"It is a husband's prerogative to be so," he replies, suppressing a grimace, and sighs as his cravat is discarded. "Were the doctor not on his way, I would certainly make the most of the view," he says, and she rolls her eyes.

"You could not make the most of a slice of bread with that shoulder," she says, and it's true. He's obviously in a lot of pain, despite his efforts to disguise his grimaces, and he can't seem to straighten up his body in the chair. Her brow furrows in concern and she starts unbuttoning his shirt so she can investigate further.

"Perhaps you intend to make the most of me instead," he says. She shoots him a scolding look and pulls his shirt open, refusing to be distracted. She inhales sharply.

"Sidney, why did you not say how bad this was," she scolds, running her fingers over his heavily bruised flesh. He winces.

"I cannot think of much except this shoulder," he says. "As to the rest, I could hardly comment."

Fortunately, the sound of some clamour in the hall announces Dr Fuchs arriving, and she runs to meet him.

It does not take him long to diagnose.

"I shall reset the shoulder, and then it must be rested completely until it heals, Herr Parker," the doctor says gravely, once he has examined him, and he suggests Charlotte exit the room for the gruesome spectacle of slotting Sidney's shoulder back into its rightful place.

She declines, and allows Sidney to near-crush her hand as the deed is done with a sickening crunch and a series of heavy curses.

She smooths his hair and strokes his clammy brow once it's over, and helps him drink a strong painkilling draught, the taste of which gives him further cause to curse. The doctor instructs him to take two days of complete bed rest on account of his various injuries, much to his chagrin. Charlotte glares at him when he starts to protest, and he grudgingly lets her help him up to bed, limping on an ankle that he's only now realising hurts quite a lot with the distraction of his dislocated shoulder no longer in play.

Once he's safely in bed, she kisses his forehead, his eyelids already heavy courtesy of the draught he's taken. He grasps her wrist when she turns to leave, thinking he ought to have the whole bed to sleep in.

"Stay," he says, a little slurred. She smiles and perches on the edge of the bed.

"I have yet to dress for bed," she says, and he hums.

"You don't generally need clothes when you're in bed with me," he says, and she laughs softly at the endearing mix of drowsiness and mischief in his expression.

"Very well," she says, and she manages to get herself out of her day dress and underthings with minimal input from him, while he watches with slightly unfocused but undeniable interest from his position in bed.

"Now I wish I hadn't taken that draught," he says, as she walks unclothed over to the bed and slips in beside him. "I'd like nothing more than to ravish you thoroughly."

She inches over so she can put her hand to his cheek and pull his face gently to hers. She kisses him softly.

"Well," she says against his lips. "If you behave, perhaps in the morning I shall ravish you," she murmurs, and he laughs aloud.

"I like the sound of that much more."

.......

_two_.

.......

They are not long married when news from London comes.

He is the one to open the letter, but she sees at once the moment he freezes, tenses up like he's feeling the weight of the entire world suddenly threatening to drop on his shoulders. Her chest tightens with dread.

"What is it?" she asks, and he looks up at her with preoccupied eyes, half on her and half on something only he can see.

She worries.

He hands her the letter and goes to sink slowly into the armchair by the empty fireplace, his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hands.

"_...regretful news that Mrs Eliza Campion passed away on Wednesday after a sudden illness..._"

It's a strange feeling that follows. There's no love lost between her and Eliza Campion, but that doesn't mean the thought of her death is not abhorrent. And by this account she died alone, and suffering, and full of regrets.

She lays the letter on the table and goes to him. He sighs and looks up at her, and she can see the complexity of the dark thoughts swarming behind his eyes as he focuses on her. She once thought him an unfathomable man, but the deeper their relationship grows the more she can see right through the layers he's built up against the world.

He's hurting.

She places her hand on his shoulder, uncertain of her place in this grief that does not technically involve her, not knowing what to do when faced with the spectre of a woman who once had such power, who might have caused them all to live a very different life.

The woman he first loved.

For a second she wonders if he will say anything, or if she should simply back away and leave him to mourn privately, if that would be the kinder option even if it makes her feel like an outsider to this part of him that she still struggles to understand.

But when she's about to withdraw, he suddenly places his hand on hers; looks up at her with a deep and solemn sigh. He takes her hand and uses it to pull her down into his lap, which makes her jump but she's more than happy to take her place there and she winds her arms around his neck.

He drops a kiss to the bare skin at the juncture of her neck and shoulder and she winds her fingers into the soft hair at the nape of his neck.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asks quietly, drawing back to gauge his expression. He tightens his arms around her waist and thinks.

"I don't know," he says. "I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel. I... we were not close, not at all, in the end, but it still feels terrible that she's gone. I suppose that's strange of me."

He looks a bit guilty to admit that and she's quick to offer an understanding smile.

"I do not think that's strange at all," she says. "She was very important to you once. I cannot think that that does not leave a mark."

In truth, she doesn't know if she truly understands, or if she ever could, when he is the only one she has ever loved this way. She does not know what it feels like to lose a past love, and the thought is strange and alien to her.

But whatever she does or does not know, she resolves to be there for him, and so it is that she holds his hand tightly on the way to the funeral, and when they're looking down at her gilded coffin she bids Eliza Campion to rest in peace and means it.

"Thank you for being here," he says, his lips pressed against her hair in the carriage ride home.

"Always," she says, and means it.

.......

_three_.

.......

He's been out with Crowe and she always gets a sense of foreboding when that happens.

Crowe is an indulgent wastrel and good sense seems to him as blood to a stone.

And it's not that she doesn't trust Sidney himself; he's always been more than capable of handling himself and she's seen him in action enough times not to worry about that, per se.

It's just, men.

She can never understand how the slightest word can turn a friendly gathering into a backstreet brawl, and yet somehow that is what happens on a weekly basis at the alehouse frequented by the patrons of Sanditon.

So when he comes in in the middle of the night she jumps at the sound of the door thumping, and a muffled curse. She is dressed for bed, but she'd been unwilling to actually sleep until he was safely home, and she nudges her way out of the bedroom with a thin robe slung over her shoulders so she can quietly slip downstairs.

He starts when he sees her midway down the staircase. "Charlotte," he says in surprise. And then looks guilty.

She stares.

"What in heaven's name have you been doing?" she exclaims, and rushes down the remaining steps.

His face is half covered in blood from a vibrant nosebleed and a cut over his eye. He's got a split lip, and to finish it off, the beginnings of a large and angry bruise is swelling on his cheekbone. She is appalled.

"Now, before you think badly of me, at least allow me to explain-"

"I can think of only one explanation that would result in you coming back looking like that!" she cries. But despite the indignation in her voice she's already reaching for him, helping him out of his battered and dusty coat and pushing him through into the sitting room where she brusquely sits him down on one of the chairs and leans in so she might inspect the damage.

She mutters under her breath as she fetches cloth and water and alcohol and dressings.

"...thought you'd left all this nonsense behind when we were married..." she hears herself saying, the annoyance rolling off her in waves as she sits on a stool before him and starts dabbing away at his various cuts and bruises.

He looks up at her with a mixture of protest and sheepishness in his expression.

It's _so_ annoying how fast a look like that can get under her skin.

"What were you fighting for, anyway?" she says, and wipes the blood from his nose more forcefully than strictly necessary.

"Ow," he complains, twitching away, but she seizes him by the chin and holds him firmly in place. "If you must know, I was fighting for your honour," he says crossly.

"My honour," she scoffs. "And how, pray tell, is it that that came to be in jeopardy when I was not present, Mr Parker?"

A dark look flashes over his face then and she pauses, silently assessing, thinking that maybe something a bit more serious than foolish male horseplay did happen that night. "Sidney," she says, and tilts his chin so he meets her eye.

"There are fools who like to speculate how a girl such as you should have come by a man such as me," he says. His voice is laden with bitter sarcasm. "They had some choice opinions about where your charms must surely lie. And indeed, asked whether I would be so good as to share them with the assembled company."

She flushes. She can imagine what is said, how it looks, a country girl with no money and a generous figure catching the eye of a rich and handsome man with everything to play for. She purses her lips.

"I do not care for their opinions on my charms," she says, frowning intently as she rinses the cloth and smooths it over his cheekbone, this time far more gently. "I believe you are the only man whose view on the matter is relevant, and I am in little doubt as to how you regard me."

"Well indeed, you have nothing to fear about my appreciation of your charms," he says, and smiles for the first time since he walked in. "But I'm afraid nothing on this earth shall stop me challenging those who would disrespect my wife."

"They are drunken louts," she says disapprovingly, setting aside the cloth and placing both her hands on either side of his head so she can inspect him closely. "I wish you would stay well away. Where was Mr Crowe when all of this was happening?"

"Ah, well he was being a drunken lout," says Sidney, and she rolls her eyes and sits back.

"You'll do," she says, sighing. "No stitches necessary. Though you'll get some strange looks in church on Sunday, I daresay."

He stands up, rolling his tense shoulders with a sigh. "I am sorry to have worried you," he says, reaching out to place his hand on her cheek. She looks at him with mingled affection and exasperation.

"I suppose I knew what I was getting into when I married you."

She's looking up at him, craning a bit because she's only in slippers and he's got his boots on, and how much taller he is than her is even more pronounced than usual. She finds she enjoys the contrast, and basks in the feel of his sturdy frame as he puts his arms around her and inhales slowly against her hair.

"Come to bed," she says, her voice a bit husky. He tilts his head and grins at the suggestion in her tone.

"Perhaps you like the roguish look in your husband after all," he suggests, raising an eyebrow and then wincing when it stings. She rolls her eyes and thumps him on the chest.

"I like my _husband_," she says smartly. "Be thankful I am willing to overlook his ghastly swollen eye."

"A fair point," he says, and then he lets her lead him up to bed, where they quite forget about swollen eyes.

.......

_four_.

.......

"It is a bad fever," says Dr Fuchs, closing his leather bag with a grave snap. "This night will be critical, Frau Parker."

Charlotte squeezes her hands together so hard her fingers turn white and the ridges of her wedding ring digs into her flesh. She barely notices.

She crosses the room and lays her cold fingers on his burning, burning forehead, and she fights the desperate tears that threaten to pour down her face.

_I cannot lose you_, she thinks, and strokes his cheek as if to press the life back into him.

"Keep him comfortable, Frau Parker. If he wakes, send for me. I will return in the morning, one way or the other," says the doctor darkly, and she cannot bear to look at him as he leaves the room for fear of seeing the gravity on his face.

"Please," she whispers, leaning over him and pressing her face to his. "I need you to stay with me."

He is flushed, incoherent. She has not heard the sound of his voice for a full day for the first time in so many months, and her entire being is awash with fear. The thought that she might lose him is more than she can bear as she sits beside him and clutches his hand like she can tether him to this life through sheer force of will.

This illness started suddenly, taking him from her strong husband to a shaking, burning patient lying under damp sheets and shivering. In the space of a day he has slipped into this dark silence, and as she holds his hand tightly she feels devastatingly alone.

Mary enters the room with fresh water and strips of clean linen. 

"Any change, my dear?" she says, and makes a small sound of concern when she looks at Sidney's greyish skin and the sheen of sweat that covers his forehead, no matter how many times Charlotte bathes it.

"I think he's worse," Charlotte chokes out. Mary sets the basin down and squeezes her hand.

"God willing, he is strong, Charlotte," she says. "He will get through this."

Charlotte tries to smile but she can hardly bear to take her eyes off him for a second, in case he somehow disappears while she not there looking. She doesn't know if Mary's right but she simply can't think that she isn't.

When Mary is gone, she takes a fresh cloth and soaks it in cool water, and presses it gently to his burning skin.

"I love you," she says, pressing her lips to his temple. "There are so many things we have left to do. So you can't leave, do you hear? I won’t have it."

He doesn't respond, and tears slide silently down her face.

She sits rigid in the chair and watches over him for hours, her back aching and her eyes puffy and sore, until finally, exhaustion sets in such that even she cannot keep her eyes from dropping.

She falls into a shallow sleep curled over the bed, her hand still tightly clutching his as she drops into restless oblivion.

Dawn comes only short hours later, streaming in through the curtains in pale winter light. She wakes with a start, and panics. She should not have fallen asleep, should have kept her eyes on him, should never have dropped her vigil. Her eyes fly to his face in terror.

Speculative dark eyes look down the bed at her, and the relief rises like a cresting wave.

She flies to her feet and reaches for his forehead to feel his skin, and the fiery heat is gone. He feels warm, but not dangerously so, and his eyes are clear and focused as he looks up at her. 

"Hello," he says, croaky and rough from disuse, but to her it's like listening to the ring of silver bells.

"Thank God," she whispers, and presses her lips to his cheek desperately. "I was so afraid."

"Yes," he says, wincing as he heaves himself further up against the pillows. "Yes, I thought about dying for a moment. But then I thought about what my uncommonly ferocious wife might do to me if I did, and thought the better of it."

She laughs tearfully, because her relief has left her feeling shaky and overwhelmed, and she can't stop burying her face against his neck and reassuring herself that he is _alive_.

He puts a weary hand to the back of her head and holds her close.

"Come here," he says, and shifts as best he can in the bed so there's space for her to climb in next to him. She fits herself tightly to his side and places her hand upon his heart, allowing the steady thump of it under her fingers to drive away the lingering fear still beating in her own.

She thinks how very fragile this life of theirs is, how thin the margins are between life and death and love and grief, and so she clings to him with all she has because it’s all that’s in her power to do, against the rising tide of time and fate that carries them both along.

Love has pain built in, she realises, but she knows she would choose it every time.

.......

_five_.

.......

He comes back from Trafalgar House in a temper.

She's perched in his chair in the study and already dressed for bed, her hair a little damp and curling from an earlier bath.

He's so annoyed he hasn't even bothered to shed his coat and boots.

For all he's been through, Tom has never learnt to manage money and he's once again asking Sidney for a loan to sit on top of the thousands he already owes, and Sidney's still not learnt to say no. And all the words he didn't manage to say to Tom are pouring out now in a flurry.

She watches him pacing the floor in agitation, his brow knitted together and his jaw clenching in barely restrained anger.

"...he is presenting it as if I were the villain in all of this, withholding resources from his _worthy _endeavours. And as if it weren't enough that he's wasting thousands that I've _already_ poured into his ventures, he's quite happily endangering Mary and the children's futures again, and for what!" he snaps, and swings around to look at her, gesturing wildly with one arm.

At the startled expression on her face he takes a ragged breath and lowers his arm, looking suddenly guilty.

"I'm sorry, it is hardly your doing," he says, and she offers a small smile. She stands and goes to his side and slowly puts her hands on him, smoothing them down his chest, like she's gentling a wild horse.

"I know that you care for Tom," she says. "But you've done your best for him. He will see that."

"No, he will come again next month asking for money," Sidney says harshly, flicking his gaze between each of her eyes restlessly. "He never learns."

She feels the tension thrumming under his skin like a hard-wound spring driving him to aggravation. She regards him carefully, reading his familiar face with a practised eye, and realising slowly that there are no words she can say that will take this pent up energy from him tonight.

But other things might do it.

She watches the pulse jump in his throat.

"What do you need?" she murmurs, her eyes on his, and there's no hiding how his gaze rakes briefly down her body. He has never been able to resist.

He clenches his jaw as she pulls the first ties on her thin shift.

"I am... in no mood for gentleness," he says tensely. She can see how tightly he's holding himself back.

She just smiles, raises one eyebrow, and when she undoes one more tie it's like she's lit the touchpaper. He tugs her to him with a firm pull on her wrist and slides his arm around her waist, drawing her hips flush against him as he lowers his head and claims her lips in a bruising kiss.

He buries one hand in her hair and the other roams her back, her hips, pressing her into him with a barely uttered groan. He drops his lips to her throat, walking her back until she's leant against his desk with him between her parted legs.

She feels her heart hammering in her chest.

She's not seen this side of him before and it's both startling and arousing, and she gasps his name as he bites and sucks her neck hard enough to mark her skin. Her lips find his again, and he's tugging at the front of her shift until the ties are all loosened and it falls open, and then she loses most of her grasp on coherent thought when he touches her bare skin.

She certainly loses the rest when he's suddenly lifting her skirts, bunching them at her waist and touching her, testing, and finding what he wants as her lips part in silent pants. His eyes are dark and intense as he studies her for a second, seeking the answer to some unspoken question lying deep in her eyes, and whatever it is he needs to see he seems to find, because he puts his hands on her waist and slowly turns her around so she's facing his desk.

She looks uncertainly over her shoulder at him, feels a bit on edge; not uncomfortable or afraid, never that with him, but very aware of the unfamiliarity of what they're doing, and nonplussed as to what he's going to do next.

And then it becomes strikingly clear when she hears rather than sees the motion of him unbuttoning his breeches and then feels him smooth his hand up her right thigh, adjusting her skirts around her waist and then placing his hands over both of hers to lean her forward over his desk. He pauses, bent over her, and presses his lips to her ear.

"Stop me, any time," he says, his voice low and rough. "Just say, and I will stop."

She turns her head and kisses him over her shoulder instead, and then she's only gasping.

It's not like anything they've ever done before and it's a wildfire that sets her whole body alight. He spoke honestly before and it is not gentle, but right now between them it doesn't need to be. She trusts him implicitly to know what she wants, what's right for her, and there is something intoxicating, overwhelming, about this feeling of surrender in giving him what he so clearly needs.

He's moving quickly, for once holding nothing back, and before very long his stuttered grunts in her ear are a clear sign that he's rapidly losing control, and he presses his fingers hard into her hips as he tenses and slumps over her, elbows propping him up over her body as she catches her breath.

He's still for long moments, his laboured breaths warm against her shoulder, and then he's lifting himself off her so the cool air rushes against her bare skin. She pushes herself up and turns, and sees him now all tenderness and a slight air of embarrassment as he leans in and pulls her close to his chest, still fully clothed but in disarray, his buttons undone and a slight sheen of sweat on his brow as he recovers.

"I'm-"

"Don't say sorry," she cuts in quickly with a faint smile. "You did not hear me complain."

"I do not know what I have done to deserve a wife such as you," he says, and leans his forehead to hers. "Thank you."

"It was quite literally my pleasure," she says, with a hint of mischief.

He laughs.


End file.
